


it's not easy having yourself a good time

by SafelyCapricious



Series: shaking up and breaking down [2]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Time Travel, BAMF Haruno Sakura, Gen, Haruno Sakura-centric, Not Canon Compliant, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Slice of Life, Strong Haruno Sakura, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-08
Updated: 2020-10-08
Packaged: 2021-03-07 23:08:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26885623
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SafelyCapricious/pseuds/SafelyCapricious
Summary: There’s something wrong with the prisoner. Which should go without saying, but what’s wrong with her is weird in a way the normal wrong is not and Kakashi doesn’t like it.Some of her alarming behavior he didn’t see, but he’s heard about it plenty.She’d let herself get arrested by a chunin, for one. Which wouldn’t bother him so much if he hadn’t seen the bodies she’d left behind. But according to Izumo and Kotetsu she’d refused to hand the brats over, to them or to the jounin on the scene, until Iruka had wandered by, then she’d happily handed them off to him.
Relationships: Haruno Sakura & Uchiha Sasuke & Uzumaki Naruto
Series: shaking up and breaking down [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1952911
Comments: 54
Kudos: 579





	it's not easy having yourself a good time

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Scissor Sisters I Can't Decide because that's where the title of the first section was from.
> 
> This is a transitional section, with some different POVs. Gotta love it. You should DEFINITELY read part 1 of the series shaking up and breaking down. So if you haven't please scroll back up and go read part one first, or click here.
> 
> Also this is for Fictober day 7: Eyes (the eyes the eyes the eyes)
> 
> Please enjoy!

There’s something wrong with the prisoner. Which should go without saying, but what’s wrong with her is weird in a way the normal wrong is not and Kakashi doesn’t like it.

Some of her alarming behavior he didn’t see, but he’s heard about it plenty.

She’d let herself get arrested by a chunin, for one. Which wouldn’t bother him so much if he hadn’t seen the bodies she’d left behind. But according to Izumo and Kotetsu she’d refused to hand the brats over, to them or to the jounin on the scene, until Iruka had wandered by, then she’d happily handed them off to him. 

She’d gone so peacefully, after that, that she was still being guarded by ANBU because they couldn’t ignore how loudly the whole thing was screaming ‘trap’. 

Her enjoyment of the meals they are bringing her is another thing that is weird -- because even without the genjutsu it isn’t especially good food. It’s not supposed to be, it’s just supposed to keep the prisoner alive and yet. And yet she has strong opinions about the food — or more specifically, the different ‘bugs’ that appear in it, and she eats it all with relish like she’s never tasted anything better. 

Mostly though he isn’t sure what to do with the knowledge that the girl seems to like maggots the best. 

The most confusing, at least to him, is her sleep schedule. It is driving him _mad_ , it doesn’t make any sense.

Every five hours, regardless of how many visits she’s had or when food is served, she will settle down and close her eyes and, theoretically, sleep for an hour. Exactly an hour unless she’s interrupted by someone visiting or bringing her food. And if she is interrupted then she’ll wait until it hit the next time point and do the same thing.

It had taken him a week to figure it out, because it seems random at first but then he’d brought a watch and yes. Every five hours, almost to the fucking second.

It is terrifyingly exact, and he isn’t sure how she knows how much time had passed -- and when they’ve deliberately woken her up during every hour she’s fallen asleep it hadn’t seemed to affect her in any noticeable way, and it certainly didn’t throw off the timed naps.

She never yawns for real or seems tired, even though her shoulders seem constantly dragged down with fatigue. He’d blame that on the shackles if she moved like they weighed anything, but most of the time she seems to literally forget they’re their, often looking confused when she hits them against things.

He also doesn’t like how she’s taken to smiling in his direction — regardless of which position he’s taken for that shift — as soon as he gets there like she knows who he is.

He doesn’t like that at all.

There is definitely something wrong with her and he doesn’t like it. He’s not sure if she’s insane or just broken in a way he’s never seen before, and as much as he wants to be glad when he’s told she’s being turned over to the Uchiha he can’t help but be somewhat concerned about it.

***

Shisui steps forward to introduce himself as soon as he’s managed to stop laughing.

Their new pink haired captive blinks and rocks back on her heels when he says his name — and he preens for a moment, she must have heard of him — before she says, “Oh, you have eyes. You should definitely keep those.” And then clasps his wrist with an oddly firm grip.

As if what she’s just said isn’t absolutely insane.

Her grip doesn’t hurt, but he’s fairy sure she could throw him over her shoulder with it — and he’s only a little relieved that it doesn’t seem like she’s going to.

He thinks she might soon be his favorite person. Between her slightly unhinged level of protectiveness towards his little cousin, how powerful she clearly is, and the fact that he’s starting to suspect she is completely insane, she’s fast climbing the list.

Which isn’t to say he isn’t still suspicious. He’s noticed how weirdly good she is at not meeting his gaze — and not in the obvious way most people avoid it, by looking way too high or way too low or just tilting their whole face down the entire time they’re talking to an Uchiha. No, she’s staring at his face and he’s pretty sure that anyone watching them thinks she’s meeting his gaze, but she’s not. And he’s tried shifting his weight and moving his head and bobbing and weaving and he hasn’t managed to actually catch her eyes once.

Even now, while he’s still got her wrist in his grasp and she’s looking almost at his eyes he can’t catch them.

“You’re supposed to tell me your name, now,” he prompts, still not releasing her.

Her head tilts to the side like introductions are some cultural phenomena she’s never heard of. “Oh, I’m Sakura.”

He waits for a moment, for more, but she just blinks at him.

He glances over at Itachi who is starting to look at him suspiciously — like _he’s_ the one who just hasn’t bothered to give a family name. Well, it reads as suspicious to Shisui, to those unfamiliar with Itachi it likely just reads as blank.

Except that Sakura has now glanced at Itachi and is now regarding Shisui with an overly suspicious expression. Which, of course, just makes Shisui feel _more_ suspicious. But he’s obviously the only one out of the three of them who has been appropriately socialized, so he tries to prompt her. “I’m Shisui _Uchiha_ , you are Sakura…?”

She grins — bright and wide and terrifying. “I don’t have the hair, and I definitely don’t want the eyes, to pull off being a Uchiha,” she says, and he thinks he might be getting a toothache from how cute she sounds all of a sudden, “so I guess I have to be just Sakura.”

And then there’s a slight tingle in his wrist and his hand opens without his permission and he’s released her without meaning to and she’s still smiling even as she’s suddenly several paces further away.

He rubs at his wrist and wonders if he’ll be able to convince Mikoto to let him stay for lunch — because watching Sakura, Just-Sakura deal with Fugaku is going to be _hysterical._

***

Mikoto is accustomed to being underestimated, despite the fact that her service history isn’t a secret. As a housewife it’s easy to fade into the background for most people. Sakura, Mikoto thinks, will never be able to fade into the background but also will never not be underestimated.

She is well aware that her son has been scheming, which she doesn’t object to, but she is somewhat concerned, now that she’s seen the girl in question, he might not be thinking entirely strategically.

She has bright pink hair which looks shaggy — like she probably cut it with a kunai at some point and it’s grown out without any attention since then — and walks with light steps a pace behind Itachi, as they approach the house, Shisui stepping back and forth between the two his eyes bright in a way that always spells trouble. Sakura’s eyes are politely downcast as they approach.

“Sak’ra!” Sasuke screams and dashes around Mikoto to launch himself at the frail looking woman -- and Mikoto watches Sakura’s eyes light up as she transforms from pretty to beautiful and easily catches the little boy and settles him against her hip

“Sasuke, show some restraint,” Fugaku scolds, and Sakura scowls even as she shifts her weight and puts herself between Mikoto’s husband and her son. There is fierceness that Mikoto appreciates when it’s directed towards protecting Sasuke, if a lack of wisdom in pitting herself against Fugaku.

“Where’ve you been?” Sasuke demands, more subdued now, “thought we were friends.”

“Of course we’re friends, Sasuke-kun,” Sakura scolds and brushes his dark hair back, she then hovers a hand over a scraped knee. Mikoto doesn’t even sense the chakra, but as her hand moves away there’s unblemished skin behind which -- she eyes the chakra restraints on the woman and wonders. “But I’m new here, so there were a _lot_ of people who wanted to talk to me, have me for a meal, introduce themselves, you know, boring adult stuff.”

Shisui is snickering behind her even as Itachi keeps a perfectly straight face. Mikoto, well aware of both Sakura’s imprisonment and recent visits to T&I, both admires the diplomacy of her answer and doesn’t trust it.

“I think, actually, that I’m here for a meal. I bet your mom’s a better cook than I am, huh?” Sakura seems to finish her check on the boy and then turns a bright smile to her hosts.

Itachi and Fugaku are too busy staring at each other, and Shisui has started to make faces at Sasuke where he’s peering over Sakura’s shoulder, so Mikoto steps forward to play hostess.

“Welcome to our home,” she says, smiling. Sakura’s eyes don’t meet hers, though they dance over her face as she bows her head -- clever behavior, and far too practiced for someone new to Konoha. “I do hope you enjoy dinner.”

Sakura smiles and absently ruffles Sasuke’s hair, ignoring as he scowls and smooths it down before smiling at her toothily. “I’m sure I will,” she says, blandly, and the two underestimated women continue to eye each other for a moment before nodding and proceeding into the house.

***

Danzo is expecting the notification any day, either an announcement of the execution or the notice that it had happened. He’d been disappointed when the Uchiha brat and demon child had been successfully recovered -- something that most certainly wouldn’t have happened if he’d used ROOT, but it was very hard to find good outside help. But the girl who had found them -- ah, that had been a pleasant surprise.

She’d just blinked in confusion and hadn’t resisted at all as she was brought down. He is sure that whoever had decided to use her as a scapegoat to return the children was well gone -- but Orochimaru seems less inclined to try again so quickly after his first failure.

But that is fine, because now Danzo has the innocent looking flower to help shift public opinion away from the Uchiha. Not quite the blood bath he’s hoped for, but he is sure with a little prompting he can have people actively protesting the high handed aggressiveness of the Uchiha.

Fugaku is, as always, exceeding easy to provoke with his paranoia and delusions of superiority, so it is only a matter of time before he can use the murder of the pink little girl to harm them.

***

“Did she just wave at me?” Genma asks, craning his neck to watch as the woman is dragged away by two five year olds, one light and one dark and each pulling at one of her arms.

“Hm,” Kakashi opts not to answer, turning a page in his book and not actively looking up.

The woman -- she says her name is Sakura, but Kakashi isn’t quite willing to believe anything she says -- has been waving at him since the first time she stepped foot out of the Uchiha district four months ago.

After the smiling business when she was still a prisoner, it continues to concern him — even if she shouldn’t be his concern anymore.

This is just the first time Genma has been with him when it’s happened. Mainly because Genma has been on a mission for the past three months.

“She’s kinda hot,” Genma says, “but that maggot thing was gross.”

Kakashi shrugs and turns a page in his novel, not willing comment just yet.

She waves at him when he’s wearing his ANBU mask, regardless of what henge he has on his hair, and she waves at him when he has his nose stuck into Icha-Icha, and she’s even tried to talk to him a few times. He’s starting to think he should hear what she has to say, at some point, but she almost always has sensei’s kid with her when she’s not with the Uchiha, and so he’s had to keep heading to the memorial stone instead of sticking around to chat.

“They weren’t real maggots,” Kakashi points out, but now his mind is whirling. Look underneath the underneath. Originally he’d thought that her eating the maggots had tried to show that she couldn’t see through genjutsu. Except that where he’d been against the wall was hidden with genjutsu, and that she’d made a point of letting them know she’d seen through. Or...maybe not through. Maybe she could just sense genjutsu? But she really had seemed to relish the maggots.

What had she gone through that she enjoyed maggots?

Maybe it was a missing nin thing — usually when he ran into them it was an elimination mission, or capture and straight to T&I. Of course, usually they weren’t wandering in having rescued two missing children.

He probably needs to let her catch him and talk to him at some point. Sighing and slouching more with the realization he continues to amble. It won’t be today.

***

There is definitely something off about her. Inoichi had told them about what had happened in T&I, and had asked him to investigate a little further. Which, well, he hasn’t _not_ been doing. But he also hasn’t come to any sort of decision yet.

He planned on observing her for the first month, and then intended to make contact.

But she has proven to be shockingly hard to run into for all that her hair is bright enough — and her tendency to wear bright colors? is she just doing that to piss off the Uchiha? — she should, by rights, be fairly easy to track down.

But he’s always just seeing her leave or duck back into the Uchiha compound, or vanish in a swirl of cherry blossoms and…He’s not saying ‘Sakura’ is a fake name, but he’s definitely not going to be surprised if it is.

And now another four months have passed after the first and he finally manages to run into her, literally, when he’s on his way to dinner with Chouza next to him and she’s coming out of a convenience store, several plastic bags dangling from her hands.

“Shit, sorry Shi-ir,” she says, with a wrinkle of her nose.

“No harm done,” he says, and holds out a hand. “Shikaku Nara. Nice to meet you.”

“Sakura,” she says, and shifts her bags around so she can offer her hand. She lays her hand so gently in his he wonders if she’s not used to hand shakes. He gives her a perfunctory one before tucking his hands away as Chouza exchanges greetings as well. She twitches her shoulders and moves slightly, shifting her weight until she’s got her back to a wall instead of the storefront.

Paranoia he expects from her, but there’s something about her expression when she looks at him and Chouza that he can’t place. He doesn’t like it — it makes him itchy.

She shifts her weight again and he half expects her to vanish without even excusing herself, so he speaks before she can. “Big plans?” he asks, eyeing the bags she’s holding — he can see cookies and soda and chips and a whole variety of other junk foods in half of them — and what looks like strictly produce in the rest.

He’s trying to imagine the Uchiha patriarch eating pink cookies with a cheerful koala on the packaging and it’s just not working.

She rocks back on her heels and narrows her eyes at him for a moment before rolling them expressively. “Just finished cleaning Naruto-kun’s kitchen, so have some things to restock, and got enough that I can start introducing Sasuke-kun to junk food because he’s _five_ and his favorite food is tomatoes, does that sound right to you?”

There’s a lot to unpack there, but he gives himself a moment to consider. He’s seen her marching around the village — always with an Uchiha trailing behind (if sometimes further behind than he thinks they would like, judging on the expression on their face) — and nearly always with two kids attached to her.

One of them is bound to be more of a tender point than the other, given that she’s living with Sasuke-kun’s family and therefore theoretically has a reason to spend time with him.

Although given how she’s starting to shift and gather chakra at her fingertips he wonders if she’s stable enough to spend so much time with the kids — but then, he’s sure the Uchiha won’t do anything to endanger their spare heir.

But he does want to get to dinner sometime before midnight, so he decides to prod that potential soft spot and see what it gets him. “You’re spending a lot of time with Naruto, aren’t you? That might not be such a good idea.”

She goes completely still — and he’s not sure if the chakra on her fingers has frozen or been reabsorbed — and she stares at him with eyes that make him want to take a step back.

Where before they were bright and green and nervous, now they are steel and ice and _death_ , for all that they’re still bright green.There’s a hardness there he isn’t expecting, for all that he knows she’s a missing nin (from where? she really doesn’t have an accent, or if she does it sounds fire nation and that doesn’t make any sense) and therefore must be at least somewhat proficient at protecting herself, this is the first he’s seen something actively dangerous around her.

It makes him want to push more to see when she’ll break.

It’s night, so there are shadows everywhere and he’s not actively worried about what she might do — but if he met her on a mission with that look in her eyes he thinks he might try to avoid the fight.

Suddenly she’s smiling, so widely her eyes are almost entirely squinted closed. “Strangely enough,” she says through her far too wide smile, “you’re not the first person to try to warn me off him.” She tilts her head to the side and her smile is now big enough that her eyes are completely closed. “But no one will tell me _why._ So it must not be that important.” She taps her foot and — but no — there’s no way — “Oh well,” she says with an easy shrug.

Which — alarming. She knows more than she should. Which Inoichi had told her but…but he thinks it might be even more than they’d thought. The potential of her being a spy — but for who? — is seeming increasingly likely.

But…but she’s also being absurdly protective. A ploy? If it is, it’s a good one, and he might be convinced.

She’s watching him now, eyes hard over her smile, and he lets out a breath. This is going to be troublesome. “Hm,” he offers with a shrug. “And how are the Uchiha treating you?”

“Oh, you know, standard. Only torture me on Tuesdays and every other Friday. They’re very polite like that.” Her smile drops a little, almost hitting sincere but still missing.

He can’t decide if she’s a very good liar or a very bad one, and he doesn’t like that.

But she’s intriguing. Interesting. He offers her a small smile, and something about that breaks her — and her fake smile falls off her face and she laughs. She looks more sane, now, and less bloodthirsty.

He thinks he should probably leave and get dinner before he actually causes an incident — the Uchiha that’s watching her from the roof hasn’t bothered to intervene yet, but he thinks it’s probably only a matter of time, and that’s a headache he doesn’t especially want to deal with just now.“Well,” he says, “we won’t hold you any longer. It was nice to meet you, _Sakura_.”

“Always informative to talk to new people, Nara-san,” she says, and then there’s only a single cherry blossom settling to the dirt and she’s gone.

**Author's Note:**

> Please let me know if you think I should tag for anything I didn't tag for and please let me know if you have any questions. The comments on part one gave me life, and I hope you enjoy this! More direct Sakura action coming soon. 
> 
> Spoilers, there may be some _actual_ kidnapping in the next part. 
> 
> Per usual, if you wanna ask me questions or bug me plz come find me on [on my writing tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/capriciouswrites).
> 
> We're in for a long haul of fictober ya'll. 
> 
> Please let me know what you think! 
> 
> Hope everyone is having a day.


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